


A Love I Seemed To Lose With My Lost Saints

by prairiecrow



Series: The Curse of the Mendari [3]
Category: Star Wars Original Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Droid to Human, Grief/Mourning, Jealousy, M/M, Revelations, Rivals, Self-Sacrifice, Temporary Character Death, Transformation, Unrequited Love, Unrequited Lust
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-20
Updated: 2015-12-20
Packaged: 2018-05-07 23:27:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,534
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5474468
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/prairiecrow/pseuds/prairiecrow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the aftermath, in their shared grief, Artoo Detoo and Anra Virlan have a painful but revealing conversation.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Love I Seemed To Lose With My Lost Saints

**Author's Note:**

> All titles in this series taken from "How Do I Love Thee? (Sonnet 43)" by Elizabeth Barrett Browning
> 
> How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.  
> I love thee to the depth and breadth and height  
> My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight  
> For the ends of being and ideal grace.  
> I love thee to the level of every day’s  
> Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.  
> I love thee freely, as men strive for right.  
> I love thee purely, as they turn from praise.  
> I love thee with the passion put to use  
> In my old griefs, and with my childhood’s faith.  
> I love thee with a love I seemed to lose  
> With my lost saints. I love thee with the breath,  
> Smiles, tears, of all my life; and, if God choose,  
> I shall but love thee better after death.

After the end, there was darkness and silence again. 

No paired heartbeat. No shared breath. Only Artoo, hiding alone in the shadows of a small storage space aboard a rival's courier cruiser, sitting on the dusty floor with his back supported by a stack of crates. His arms hugged his folded legs and his forehead was bowed forward to his knees, his whole mortal body one throbbing ache of unshed tears. 

Droids never wept, couldn't weep, although existence was often cruel to them. But you could take a droid apart, scatter its parts far and wide, and then put it back together again good as new. Flesh and blood, though… especially flesh and blood consumed in fire… 

A moan rose in his throat, desperate with animal suffering. How much had Threepio suffered in those final minutes? Had he at least had the comfort of Artoo's voice over the transmitter, following him down into oblivion? Or had the transmitter failed too, leaving him utterly alone with the choice he'd made, right to the bitter end? 

The thought was unbearable, maddening — Artoo veered away from it, stumbling in the darkness of his own mind, a vast space where he was alone forevermore. 

_The last thing I did — almost the last thing, before that final transmission — was yell at him. Tell him he was an idiot —_

_And yeah, okay, maybe it was true. But those last few minutes of his life, his decision to trade his own existence for the lives of millions of strangers — that was even truer._

His senses were so dulled by his grief that he didn't even realize the door to the hallway had opened behind him, admitting thick yellow light that streamed over the floor to his right and plunged him into even thicker shadow, until a deep voice spoke with clipped accent: "Artoo? You in here?" 

Artoo's heart, already clenched by pain in every living dimension, sank even further. For a couple of seconds he considered not responding… but Anra Virlan knew every centimetre of his own ship intimately, and would just come back later. Might as well get this over with now, whatever it was. He raised his head enough to speak into the cool air of the storage room. "Over —" His voice clogged in his throat. He had to swallow to get any volume: "Over here." 

All the muscles through Artoo's back and shoulders tensed harder, anticipating the approach of booted footsteps… but Virlan remained where he was, standing in the open doorway. His silhouette, hatefuly tall and broad, was carved on the wall in front of Artoo, and Artoo could see that his spike-haired head was tilted slightly to one side, as if considering what best to say. 

"It was a good death. Quick and clean. A hero's ending, and the whole planet knowing he saved them. There's plenty worse." 

Artoo had changed his mind: he wasn't up for this. At all. "Go away." 

"Alone isn't what you need right now. And there's things you need to know." 

"Know?" He didn't try to disguise the surge of his anger, his contempt, his ferocity. "Threepio's dead — gone — that's all I need to know. Fark off!" 

Now Virlan did step inside the room; the door closed behind him, letting darkness rush back in around them. "No, lad —" 

"Don't call me that." His lacerated heart failed him, hot resentment burning only dull grey now. "I was fixing starships in the glory years of the Old Republic, a full century and a half before this Empire shitshow began. A helluva long time before you were even born." 

A few seconds of silence. "So it was true, then? Everything he told me?" 

Oh, why wouldn't the bastard just go away? "Depends. What'd he tell you?" 

"That you and him used to be droids, before the Mendari Complex got its claws into you." 

Artoo closed his eyes again and rested his forehead on his knees, coughing out a bark of laughter that felt like it was full of blood. "Threepio was a lot of things. He could lie when the situation called for it — but he wasn't natural at it, and he wasn't deluded." 

"I know that much." Another pause. "It was his singing I noticed first, you know — sweeter than honey, with a tang of life-bitterness woven through it that reached inside me and seized my heart with a hawk's claws. He had the voice of somebody who's seen the best and the worst life has to offer… the voice of wounded innocence. I could tell he was pure, unspoiled — and I'll be honest, I wanted to be the one to spoil him." 

"I told him you were bad news." Another snort of miserable laughter. "He didn't listen. He never listened." 

"Let me finish, ch'ul." Footsteps drawing nearer, nearer… then Virlan came round the corner of the crate-stack and, with a little pained grunt as his sore muscles pulled wrong, eased himself down to sit beside Artoo, their shoulders almost touching. "In the beginning he was just a pretty toy to me, a pleasure to while away my days planetside. But it didn't take me long to realize that he really was a rare jewel: innocent, yes, but with enough years and experience to know how cruel life can be." A slow inhalation, thoughtful. "For all that, he still kept reaching out to those kids and their families. He went down to the slums in his fine clothes and he sang and played lute for the slummies, and sure, they resented him at first — until they started seeing what I saw, that he had a heart as golden as his hair, full of genuine compassion and goodness." A soft laugh, fond. "I tell you, those younglings could do anything to him — pull his braid, climb all over him, spit up on his expensive tunics… he fussed about it, but I could tell he really didn't mind. They touched him in his soul, those down-and-outers. Now I ken it was because he'd been down-and-out himself, all his life. And with his warm heart, he couldn't help but try to make their lives a little bit better, because of all that his had never been." 

Artoo's head ached abominably. "Get to the damned point." 

"The point," Virlan rumbled, "is that I started out wanting to get into his trousers and wound up wanting to get into that big shining heart of his. But it was a tight squeeze, maybe too tight even for me — because the space inside was already full with somebody else." Another pause. "You've always hated me. Can't say that I blame you. Truth be told, I've resented you my fair share in return. But what I was going to say was that you never had anything to dread from me." A beat. A sigh, gentle and full of regret. Quiet words that flayed Artoo to the bone: "He always loved you — first, last, and best. And if you'd snapped your fingers just once he would've run from me in a heartbeat to shelter himself under your wing for the rest of his life." 

Confusion. Freefall. Growing terror. "No… no. It wasn't like that! He didn't…" 

"Artoo…" A big hand came to rest on Artoo's right ankle, squeezed it briefly through his boot. Artoo's eyes shot open, staring at the soft leather of his own pants. "After your big fight, he told me you two knew each other for a long time. He told me… many things. He was so sad when he spoke the tale — like a bedraggled sun-sparrow in the frost. If you could've seen his face you wouldn't be doubting what I'm telling you now." 

"No." He couldn't believe it, couldn't let himself believe it. "We — we were friends. Counterparts. We went through a lot together. But that's all there was to it." 

Virlan was silent for a long span of seconds. Then he squeezed Artoo's ankle again and took back his hand. "Have it your own way. Come on, ch'ul — let's get you to bed. See-Three used to tell me you needed a lot of taking care of. Guess that's my job now, in honour of his memory." 

Artoo raised his head, staring up at the Corellian as the larger human levered himself back onto his feet. Virlan was still favouring his left leg where blaster fire had grazed it, and although the wound in his cheek had been cleaned up it was still bad, something that would leave a lifelong scar. Once erect again he smiled down at Artoo, a rakish quirk of his mouth that reflected the stiffness on the left side of his face, and extended one gloved hand to help Artoo up off the floor. 

For a heartbeat Artoo considered striking that hand away. Maybe getting into a knock-down drag-out fight, knocking over crates and smashing off of walls — bar brawls had provided some thin comfort after quarrels with Threepio, after all… 

… but he was tired, so tired — too tired to do more than go with the flow. He reached up and clasped the hand of Threepio's first and only lover, truly not caring where or how they were going together next. 

THE END


End file.
